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Painkiller: Overdose

Painkiller Overdose is of course the expansion to the first person shooter Painkiller. In Overdose you play as a half demon, half angel, (you do the math) bent on revenge against the demon dog Cerberus for ripping off his wings and imprisoning him in hell.

Right off the bat you'll notice that it's harder than Painkiller. In fact it's a lot harder since it keeps freezing and lagging. Logically I'd assume this is due to my computer. But this is a middle of the road FPS. It's not like it's Oblivion or something. I can play Doom 3 just fine and that has better graphics so what the hell? So I turn down the graphics until it looks like Quake II. The menu screens have this weird glitchy MissingNo. shit plastered all over them. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it's my computer or incorrect directX or something but I'm not willing to look the other way with the load times. These are the longest fricking loading times for any game I've ever played in my life. Longer than any RPG. Even longer than any Splinter Cell game. It's roughly a 3-4 minute wait from the time you press go to the time that you can move around in a level. It's one hell of an incentive to not die, cause if you do it's another 3-4 minutes before you get another whack at it. Even if my computer *is* a bit dated it shouldn't take anywhere near that long. It's really great when you get to a difficult part that you can't figure out. You spend more time loading the game than actually playing it. The load time for the first boss was three times longer than the time it took me to beat the boss.

The biggest problem in the game would have to be the weapons. Your arsenal is full if bizarre and depraved-looking weapons. In any other game, you have guns and the guns all shoot bullets/explosives or if it's really fancy some kind of laser or plasma. In Overdose it takes you five minutes just to accept the fact that the severed head you're holding is a weapon and that screaming noise that it makes it what you use to kill things with. It's hard to get used to. Also in the first half of the game you're always out of ammo. It's not because the enemies are strong or it's difficult to aim. It's because every gun shoots like twenty rounds at once and wastes your ammunition either on overkilling an enemy or more likely just making pock marks in the wall. Often you find yourself running around while being attacked and scrolling through all of your weapons to find something you can shoot. Does this have ammo? No. Does this have ammo? No. If and when you find something useable you're probably already dead.

Razor Cube: This is the hand to hand weapon that doesn't take ammo to use so get familiar with it cause you don't have ammo. It spins around in your hand and chops up enemies. It reminds me of that cube in the movie Hypercube that spun around and chopped up that guy... or did it? I have no idea what was going on in that movie.
Bone Gun: It's basically a shotgun but it shoots bones. Left click shoots one bone (out of two barrels.) Right click shoots some weird black shit that temporarily freezes enemies.

Chain Gun: The only gun that looks half way normal. Left click it fires bullets like a machine gun for as long as you hold down the button. Right click is a quasi rocket launcher that fires three rounds in a triangular formation per discharge. It seems to go through or around enemies sometimes and for a rocket launcher it's pretty weak. It doesn't have a very large blast radius so you have to have it explode practically on the enemy to do any damage at all. Although I seem to have no problem injuring myself with it.

Eggs: For some reason these reptile eggs are explosive. Not only that but you can remotely detonate them with a... is that a lizard? It doesn't make any sense to have remote mines in this game. It's never possible to sneak up on enemies and use them. The only time I really need them is when I don't have ammo or a chance in hell with the razor cube and in that scenario I don't want something that I have to detonate one second after I throw it. I want something that I throw and it explodes AKA a grenade.


Nuclear gun: It harnesses the power of nuclear waste. Left click fires these canisters of radioactive sludge which kill on impact, making me wonder why they need to be filled with ooze at all. It's not like the enemy's around long enough to die from radiation poisoning. Actually the canisters stay around for a while, emitting green gas which does seem to have an effect on really close enemies. But really they'd be just as lethal filled with rocks or even candy corn. Right click just shoots a stream of that same green gas directly at an enemy. In reality this would be extremely inconvenient because really how far can you spray gas? And what if it's windy out? What If it's blowing at you? You'd at least need a mask.

Head: This is the first thing you ever see when you start Overdose. (Welcome to Overdose; here's an unbelievably hideous severed demon head with a distended spine hanging out the bottom.) It's your first real "weapon." Left click shoots a laser. I have no Idea why. I guess it's coming out of it's eyes but it only shoots one beam. Which eye is it coming from? If it's coming from both there should be two beams dammit. Right click makes the head scream and project some barely visible... gas cloud? Again I don't know what the hell's going on. When it hits an enemy and takes effect they start convulsing and basically drop dead. The little icon by your ammo is a picture of a heart. That typically indicates what type of ammo the weapon requires. So I guess what it's saying is that in order to make the screaming head project a cloud you need to power it with hearts, five hearts to be exact.

Crossbow: Left click fires/wastes three bolts. Right click fires/wastes six shrunken heads. the heads bounce around and explode. Two of them might hit enemies. The other four will either hit nothing or hit you.

Sword: Left click shoots three giggling skulls in a horizontal line. They sort of hone in on enemies and injure them. They also sort of fly past the enemies and do nothing. Right click makes the sword fly around like a boomerang. I never really got the hang of this. It seems like you have to have a ton of crystals to even get it to start. Once it's flying around you can drag your crosshairs on to an enemy and if you can manage to hold it on them long enough, the sword will fly over and chop them in half.

With all that said I've decided to make my own Painkiller Overdose weapon. It's a chair gun that shoots brains. You can't shoot it until it's full of 500 brains and then it shoots them all at once killing one or two enemies... unless you miss. This is just a rough concept but the finished one will be made of polka-dot intestines that are on fire. Also, right click makes an aurora borealis occur but only if you have at least 17 shampoo bottles.

The other most annoying thing in the game is the gas. There's gas everywhere and it hurts you badly. Enemies throw gas balls at you. Gas comes out of their chests. There are tear gas cans. Spray paint cans. It comes out of plants. Nuclear gas. Gas in the water. Gas from the floor. Gas from pitchforks. There's so much gas and usually you don't even see it until it's killing you.

Everything moronic aside, the level designs are great despite the anachronisms and even though all of them are completely random and unrelated.

I don’t think they used ballistas in the American Civil War.

You thought you were safe from angler fish in the desert? You were wrong bitch!

The enemies are all interesting and incidentally have a tendency to look like characters from various movies and videogames. I don’t know if any of them were intentional but I’m pretty sure that the level names “Animal Farm” and “Village of the Damned” were direct references.


Second from the right, same hair.


Team Fortress 2

Silent Hill: The movie actually illustrates it better than the video game.

Diablo II Expansion

The obvious good things about the Diablo II Expansion Pack are; the bigger stash, the two new characters, and a whole new act taking place in a snowy mountainous region worthy of being chronicled in it’s very own Wintersun song. The extra level also allows you more time to level up and learn all of your skills before the game actually ends.

Technically the game ends at the end of Act IV when you kill Diablo. By now you’ve killed all of the other prime evils except for Baal who escapes at the end, (a pretty shitty ending.) Then, if you like wasting money, you can get the expansion and continue your pursuit of Baal.

After you beat Diablo and start act V you begin in the under siege Barbarian fort on Mt. Aareat. Your first order of business is to stop the immediate threat of the encroaching demon army and catapults outside the gates. The problems start the minute you exit the fort. Hope you like ugly earthworks with trenches, mounds, ,footbridges and bombed-out towns ‘cause that‘s what you‘ll be seeing for the next two hours. All of this fugly garbage in your way makes a sort of labyrinth that you have to zig-zag through. And while you’re doing this you have to fight about 500 trillion of the most bland enemy, over and over. Twenty minutes later nothing has changed and you start wondering, is this going to stop at some point? Please tell me there’s more than earthworks and spiny mole-men. The monotonous and seemingly endless onslaught is punctuated with you getting hit by a stupid catapult with unknown whereabouts. Almost all of the level is linear. With the exception of the hundreds of obstructions that you have to walk around, you walk from right to left. Any time you’re not in an ice cave, you’re walking in one direction like a sidescroller. Eventually you get past the front lines and are introduced to what is the most annoying enemy in the entire game. Prior to the expansion pack, the little fetish tiki men were by a wide margin the most aggravating enemy. But after that they lost the title to…

...Imps. They shoot fireballs and teleport. But that’s not all. They’re actually the most versatile enemy. They can climb up and attack you from siege towers as well as from atop these big things that look like Wargreymon. Often you can’t get within striking distance before they teleport off screen. Then they’ll teleport back on screen just to shoot fire at you again right before they leave once more. Sometimes they just teleport like five times in a row. You’ll be dealing with about 3-8 of them at a time. It’s too much of a pain in the ass to chase them all down individually because it just takes too long. Just accept the fact that you’ll be traveling with them and be getting hit with fireballs constantly throughout this area unless you have some kind of silver bullet spell to deal with them.

Speaking of spells there are some things about the new Druids spells that really suck. The three different types of spells he has are elemental, summoning, and shape shifting. In shape shifting you can turn into a werebear and a werewolf and also get subsequent spells to perform while in either form. The problem is that you lose the ability to use all of your other spells while you’re in that form. You soon realize that there’s really no advantage to changing forms. In fact it’s more disadvantageous because you can’t use your best offensive spells. So that’s a third of your spells that you’re not even going to use because there‘s no benefit to you. In the summoning spells there are various animals and other life forms you can bring forth to fight or heal you as you play. There are three different types of vines that do different things but you can only have one summoned at a time. That makes sense I guess since a necromancer can only have a single golem at a time too. The druid can also summon a wolf/wolves depending on how many times the spell is leveled up. Then later you learn to summon dire wolves which are different. When I first learned this I thought it was good because it meant that I could have a dire wolf summoned in addition to my two regular wolves, but no. You can either have dire wolves or regular wolves out, not both at the same time which is bullshit. If you’re a necromancer you get to have skeletons AND skeleton mages out. How is that any different? Then later you learn how to summon a bear. And I thought surely I could have a bear and wolves. I mean, abear is totally different right? Again it was no. You either get the bear or wolves. And what makes it worse is that you can only ever summon a single bear. Leveling it up only makes the bear stronger. This leaves you to ponder which is better to have, one supercharged bear or an army of wolves? Well I’m certainly never going to need regular wolves again. In fact all of the early spells for all of the characters are pretty much useless after you reach about level eighteen. They’re so weak in comparison to the later spells that it would take 10 level-ups for one to emulate the damage of the first level of a later spell. It’s annoying because you spend points leveling up spells that you’re basically going to throw away and never use again.

Another thing I don’t understand about the expansion is the inclusion of ethereal clothes and weapons. The only difference between ethereal things and non-ethereal things is that ethereal things can not be repaired and consequently break and become useless at some point. Also they technically have lower requirements to use than their non-ethereal counterparts but that’s just a shroud to hide the fact that they’re pointless.

At the end of act V you get to fight Baal, the Lord of Destruction. If I remember correctly Baal is the pagan god of rain. In the Bible the Jews and pagans were having a deity-off to see who’s god was more powerful. The challenge was making a bonfire. Whichever god made a fire first was the winner. Despite all of the dancing and self mutilation performed by the pagans, Baal didn’t respond. (I guess he was sleeping.) Then the Jews completely dowsed their pile of wood with gallons of water and adding insult to injury it exploded into flames. The pagans were at a huge disadvantage though. What made them think they could get fire from a rain god?

So now that Baal is the new boss of the game doesn’t that mean that he’s tougher to beat than Diablo? The answer is yes, a hell of a lot harder. Well it differs from character to character. If you’re an assassin you can just surround him with flame traps and then hide behind a rock and wait. When you first find Baal, he's sitting on his throne and you can't hurt him. He summons five waves of the most annoying enemies from each of the acts. It's really easy to be instantly surrounded and die before even getting to lay a hand on Baal. You end up having to run back through the labyrinth until the enemies are thoroughly separated and then hunt them down one by one. After the fifth wave of enemies Baal escapes through a portal. You follow him and then the real fight begins. His main attack seems to be a flame wake that is not only devastating to your health but impossible to dodge. And it pushes you far away making it really hard to get close to him. If you have any summoned creatures they should be immediately vaporized. Ultimately in order to hit him you have to take a hit. Needless to say you’ll be taking dozens of trips back to town for more health potions. Baal can also duplicate himself so that there are two of him. If you manage to kill his replicant it’s of no consequence to him. He doesn’t get hurt from it and he’ll just make another one. One hundred trips to town later the boss of Diablo II is dead. But does it really matter?

Teaser

Strike Witches

This just in; anime getting worse…

When I first saw promotional pictures for this show on the internet I thought they were just original pieces by some crackhead with way too much time on their hands. I didn’t think there was any way a concept with anything like this in it could be given the green light for production. How naïve I was… I’ve seen some retarded shit in my day but Strike Witches redefines the term. There is no word that even comes close to describing how ridiculous it is.

The year is 1944; instead of committing wartime atrocities in China and the Philipines, Japan is a key player in the employment of a new technology that allows magical loli catgirls to fly through the sky while discharging rocket launchers and machine guns. (Sounds like a reasonable premise to me.) A handful of girls from various countries you’ve never heard of are apparantly the only thing defending the planet from a mysterious enemy called Neuroi. (They’re like the gnosis from xenosaga but more like the angels from Evangelion.) The machines that the girls use to fly are called strikers. They’re basically two torpedoes that encapsulate all of both of your legs making the wearer look almost as lethal and badass as Mr. Rogers when he’s feeding his fish. For reasons unknown these girls can use magic, (hence the term “witches”), which they use to fly and create shields to block enemy fire. Also for reasons unknown, whenever the girls are in magic mode they grow a pair of cat ears and a tail. Now honestly, why does this need to happen? It’s like they just stuck it in randomly. Why do they have two pairs of ears? Can they hear better? Is that important? Do the cat ears even work at all? What’s the point? I’m aware that some people find this shit highly erotic but to tell you the truth, I fucking hate anime catgirls. They’re not cute or sexy, they’re just annoying and stupid. And in this case, totally unnecessary. Actually not all of them have cat attributes. A couple are dogs I think and there’s also a bunny. But that still doesn’t make it any less stupid. Now that I think about it this show is like what you get when you put a dozen random anime genres through a meat grinder.

The whole idea of training frail little girls in aerial combat is moronic. Wouldn’t that be the worst possible candidate ever? If the job requires you to one-hand a giant .50 cal while rocketing through the sky to kill aliens in mid air dogfights while half naked, would they be mentally OK with that? *I* wouldn’t be. I’m sure it would be an utterly terrifying prospect to any sane person. In reality who would they find that was suicidal enough to do something that stupid. And then there’re the other problems that they don’t address like wind chill, chapped skin, thin air, and red outs. Fighter pilots in exposed cockpits wear flight jackets, scarves, hats, and goggles. You think maybe that means that wind is a hazard? Maybe they need to be wearing something other than a fucking two-piece swimsuit. Actually there is one episode where two of the girls fly a biplane and dress up in aviator gear. So what they’re saying is that the only time you need to wear wind protection is when you’re partially protected by an airplane but *not* when you‘re completely exposed to the wind.

Anatomically speaking, no one would even be able to put on a pair of strikers because you wouldn’t be able to get your feet past the entrance. If you actually watch them put them on, the tops of their feet are parallel to their shins. In other words, their ankles are bent so that their toes are pointing strait down while they stand strait up. Never mind that it’s impossible, imagine holding it like that for the entirety of your flight. And why don't they wear parachutes or something? If they get shot down at low altitude over water they're probably fine but what If they're fighting over land or even high over water? Well they're fucked aren't they. Not that I care or anything. I really wouldn't mind if they all died. While watching the show there was always the tiniest vestige of hope that someone would die. They are in a war after all. But no they have to have everyone live happily ever after ‘n’ shit. How annoying. There was death in South Pacific and that was a musical. That's as idealistic as it gets. A girl died in Gunslinger Girl, a similar anime, a much better anime too. I kind of feel dirty just for comparing them. Although in a duel I think the strike witches would win since they have infinite ammo and never have to reload thanks to the creators spending little or no time on details not involving a closeup of an ass.

Aside from being able to make a magic shield, there’s no reason why they should be doing this. Why do they even use strikers at all? Why don't they just use airplanes? Or better yet, broomsticks? And let me just say that for a show supposedly based on magic, making shields is about the lamest use for magic I’ve ever seen.

One of the more disturbing problems with the show is the lack of pants. I mean put on some pants you fucking hippies. How am I to believe this is a professional naval facility if there is absolutely no kind of uniform or even pants. Everyone just runs around in bikinis usually with a random naval jacket thrown on. Imagine watching Tora Tora Tora with Admiral Yamamoto giving orders in a thong. This, coupled with the random animal ear thing makes it impossible to take any of the show’s “drama” seriously. I've heard it argued that pants would interfere with the strikers and that it would waste precious time to take off your pants in the middle of an air raid. If this was true, other non-witch females would wear pants or something normal but they don't. And you don't see fire fighters hanging out at the fire station in fire jackets, fire pants, helmets, and oxygen masks and they're under similar time constraints. And that's actually a lot of stuff to put on. All the strike witches have to do is jump in some dumb-looking propeller legs and away they go. And on a side note, ignoring the fact that the bikini hasn’t been invented yet, any woman wearing one in public in 1944 would probably be arrested for public indecency.

Your average Strike Witches episode usually goes something like this:

Pre-intro teaser making empty promises like plot, character development, and/or action.

Intro, (which has more action in it than all of the actual episodes put together, except maybe the first and last ones.)

Girls interact/Fondling ensues

Sitting at a table

Blatant lesbian overtones

One minute of flying

Bulging vaginas

Upskirts or more fondling

Outro

Next episode preview

The plot and setting are secondary to the fan service. Hell, they’re tertiary. They should have just made a yuri porno and save what could have been a very interesting WWII alternate reality for another anime that wasn’t just dicking around. The show’s actually based off of a manga but you get my point.

In episode seven, (Nice ’N’ Breezy), we see just how crippling going pantsless can be. One girl’s bikini bottoms go missing so she steals someone else’s. Then that girl has to steal some from someone else and so on until everyone is scrambling around to reclaim what’s theirs, always with someone left half nude. Apparently everyone owns only one pair of bottoms/panties or is too much of a dumbass to go to their room and get another pair. Or maybe logic is just irrelevant when trying to meet your arbitrary crotch and ass shot quota per episode. If there’s a perfectly reasonable excuse for occasional fanservice then fine but don’t just cram it down my throat. And it couldn’t hurt to make some of them look a little older. You can’t go five minutes without seeing some eleven-year-old’s camel-toe. I know pedophilia is all the rage in Japan but lets try to show a modicum of restraint here.

Episode five is entitled “Swift, Gigantic, and Soft.” Obviously they’re talking about breasts. (All except for the swift part. I’m clueless as to how a pair of tits can be swift.) Anyway, in this episode we learn that the main character Yoshika is a flaming lesbian who can’t stop fantasizing about her teammates’ boobs and has an irrepressible urge to molest them in a public setting. You think I’m exaggerating this…

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from anime it’s that all females are lesbians if not bisexuals.

In the last episode the witches have been disbanded and basically replaced by a single unmanned flying robot. It does their job better then they could ever imagine and generally makes everyone in the 501st Special Upskirt Division look like a pile of shit. Then they all died in a fire and no one remembered who they were. The end.

End... Get it?